In a letter to Frye, dated 22 April 1934, Helen Kemp refers to this paper. The paper was written, then, during the spring term of 1934, when Frye was enrolled in Professor Kenneth H. Cousland’s Church History 1 course. Even though the description of the course indicates that it covers the period up through St. Hildebrand (eleventh century), Cousland set 1300, the year of the Roman jubilee, as the terminal date for the course material. A note at the end of the paper, written in Cousland’s hand, reads as follows: “An informative and entertaining report. Written in excellent style and with understanding of conditions and aspirations of medieval life.” The source of Frye’s information about the Franciscans Cowton and Rondel, both of whom were members of the Oxford Convent, was Andrew G. Little’s The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society at the Clarendon Press, 1892), a work Frye lists in his bibliography.1 Frye received an “A+” for the paper, the typescript of which is in the NFF, 1991, box 37, file 13.
When this letter reaches you, dear brother,2 you will know that I am now safely arrived in the Eternal City. A trading vessel leaves Ostia3 for London in a few days, and will arrive there much sooner than I can return. The captain, who is a very worthy man, is commissioned to deliver this letter to our brethren in Southwark, and from thence I have no fears of its safety. I also commend to your care an Italian brother, Guido of Perugia,4 who should arrive not long after this does, if God has prospered his journey. I encountered him in Assisi, and he gave me to understand that, having seen what there was to see in Rome, he would undertake a pilgrimage either to Canterbury or to Compostela.5 I strongly urged upon him the veneration and sanctity of Canterbury, pointing out that it was second only to Rome in approved merit, as is admitted by all. He goes through Germany, and should now be not far from Cologne, if no mishap befell him.
I write to you now, my dear brother, as one whose view of the world has been so enlarged, that in the past six months he has learned more than years of the most unremitting toil over books would have afforded. For which reason I write to my tutor and preceptor, that when I myself arrive you may understand my present mood and will be able to frame to it your wisdom and counsel which I so eagerly attend. For when I first set out on my pilgrimage, I was amazed to observe the wondrous variety and strangeness of what I saw, and thought for a time that this was the only thing to be learned from journeying into far countries, the manifold and infinite splendours of the works of God. But as I went farther and talked with wiser men, the ceaseless changes of scene failed so much to amuse and instruct me. For all God’s creatures have under different apparels very similar souls, and what moves men in England moves men here in Rome. My wonder is now, not that the world should be so great, but that it should be so much one. I have talked with a man who has been, or claims to have been, in an ecstatic state approaching heaven; I have seen a man who has been, or, again, is said to have been, in hell. I have seen great piety and hideous cruelties; I have seen the centre of the world’s glory and miles upon miles of its utter misery and desolation. Is it any wonder, then, that a simple monk should be so bemused?
Let me begin at the beginning, brother, when first I left your presence at Oxford. I received, what I later regretted, a pair of shoes from a brother, to ease my feet on the way. Passing through a ravine near Reading, striding along in great comfort and complacency, I was set upon by robbers, who threatened to kill me. “But you cannot rob me,” I said, “I have nothing; I am a Friar Minor.”6 “You a friar!” said the chief of them, “look at your shoes!” I looked down and saw my boots with the greatest horror and uneasiness. After many strong assurances, I was suffered to proceed, and, now in a thoroughly chastened mood, gave the shoes to a beggar and proceeded barefoot, as is more seemly to one of our vows. The robbers, however, were more generous than a wicked baron living near Westminster, who, out of the greed and rapacity of his soul, has set up a toll gate on the king’s highway wherewith to fleece poor travellers, to the great distress of the countryside.
King Edward held court at Westminster, being freed from the troublesome burden of wars. He is a very tall and handsome-looking man with little of the haughtiness which disfigures the French king.7 If I mistake not, however, there will come evil days upon the land when reigns his son, called Prince of Wales, as he is a weak and slothful-looking youth, loving idleness above all virtue.8 I talked to a pardoner who had come, he said, from Jerusalem, but as I had ample proof of his villainy, I much doubt his having ventured further than Rochester. His wallet was full of what passed as holy relics of venerable saints, nail parings of St. Ambrose, hair of St. Augustine, an ear of St. Gregory, and other such stuff. He told me with much glee that simple parsons and even some gentlefolk would pay him more than they could well afford for a sight of one of these trumperies, especially since Pope Boniface’s proclamations naming these as Doctors of the Church.9 I must own, being but a simple friar, that with his ready tongue he imposed upon me, until he displayed a tooth of St. Jerome’s, as he said, which would have been more suitable to that Father’s mule.10 This rogue pleased me better by telling me of the plans of our great Edward for uniting our island under his sovereignty. Wales, he said, was already subdued, and Scotland, there remaining nothing more than the hanging of a few rebels in the northern country. And yet, if the Scots are as stubborn in battle as our brother Duns in argument, I much question that they will be conquered so easily.11
London itself, like many cities, stinks in the nostrils of men. I was glad to seek refuge from importunate shopkeepers and insolent young noblemen riding poor people down in dark narrow streets with my brethren in Grey Friars.12 They are full of talk about their new church, which they affirm will be splendid. They were very kind to me, but I confess I did not relish an air of worldliness unusual in our order. We of Oxford have our studies to distract our attention from vanities, but the London brethren are not so fortunate. Now God bear witness I am no innovator, nor fomenter of trouble, but it is our duty to help the poor by being of them. Kings, nobles, princes take money from the people to build themselves great palaces; shall we do the same, we who take the rule of St. Francis? Let us hope that no one will arise to point the finger of scorn at us,13 as full of pomp and vainglory, but I much fear some such outcome from our London church.14 I liked better the fine bridge over the Thames, the like of which I have not seen in my journey, built on piles sunk in the river, and of an enormous size, that would allow people to live on it.15
From London to Canterbury the road was well travelled with pilgrims, and, after resting at the Tabard Inn at Southwark, I too set forth on a pilgrimage to the great shrine.16 At Gravesend I found bodies of malefactors swinging from gibbets, and though I shuddered and prayed for their souls, I shuddered still more at a crowd of people tearing flesh from their bodies, not in fury, but in devotion. I asked one man what he was doing, and he said: “This man died as a thief, though he robbed only the rich and was a friend to all the poor. It is the pride and cruelty of the great who have brought him to this; therefore, we reverence him as a martyr.” Filled with horror, I preached to them then and there upon the folly and wickedness of their ways, and albeit they were somewhat abashed, yet they desisted not from their dreadful practices. We friars can sometimes see further than those greater and more powerful than we. I mark with dismay increasing oppression among the rich, and greater sullenness among the poor. I fell in on the way with an abbot, to whom I recounted my day’s experience, and he replied, “They are only discontented now because there is peace. Give them war to kill some of them off and provide the rest with something to do.” At which I held my tongue, though I doubted his charity.
Though I lingered long in Canterbury, I need not weary you with my delight in a place you have seen a dozen times. Nor was there much of moment in the journey to Dover, which occupied four days. I came away from Canterbury with a merchant who had been cured there of a gouty inflammation, and on the road we stopped to look at one of the travelling mysteries, depicting the birth of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke. The people were much diverted, and I confess that I took great pleasure in seeing the rustics enter so into the divine story. I was less pleased, perhaps, at the long complaints of the shepherds about the oppressions and exactions of the rich and noble, inserted by them in defiance of Holy Writ.17
From Dover, which is a channel port, we crossed to France. The distance over the Channel is not so great as I had expected, being only about twenty miles—a strong man might swim it if the water were not so cold. The little sailboat pitched and tossed in the sea, making me grievously sick, though when I recovered, I talked to my companion the merchant, who lived at Dover, and had business in Calais. He was a wool merchant, and said that some day England would have to capture Calais. I was about to rebuke him for his enmity, but a traveller travels to learn, and one does not learn by preaching. So I asked him his reasons, and he told me that it was necessary for England to control both sides of the Channel, as a defence against invasion, and, besides, there would have to be a wool staple, or fixed market. We English produce more wool than anything else, he said, and we must have a market on the Continent of Europe which we own and will serve as a gateway to Flanders and France. “Were I king,” said he, “I would give up a hundred Guiennes for a Calais,”18 a remark which did not greatly please a Gascon who had joined us, whose father had been mayor both of Bordeaux and of London. This man said that wars were waged by kings for their own glory, not to please burghers, but the merchant told him that in future all wars would be fought cold-bloodedly, for the sake of gain, and that the day of fighting against infidels and Saracens was over. Already, he said, King Edward was summoning the burghers to help him govern the kingdom, and Philip of France was preparing to do the same thing.19 I repeat all this, as it has become freshened in my mind by much of what I have seen and heard in Italy.
At Boulogne was a tournament, and as I knew too little French to speak in anything but English or Latin, I hurried on, as I could do nothing except protest to a French brother of the Dominicans I met by chance in the street. He agreed that the tournament was a shameful and bloody business, but the nobles, he said, were powerful and it paid them well to laugh at the warnings of God’s servants. He had preached without avail against the tournament, though he said some things I should not have said, such as, that it was better for the nobles to be killing their enemies the English, or routing out heresies in the south, or going on another crusade to redeem the Holy City of Jerusalem, than to be endeavouring to slaughter one another. He spoke, as nearly as I could judge, very fluently and persuasively. The common people listened respectfully, but the younger nobles mocked him, and the older ones made a point of ignoring him.
At all events, we became companions by the way, as he was returning to Paris. We conversed, or rather should I say he discoursed, in Latin. Between Boulogne and Paris, through Amiens and Beauvais, I made more sure of what manner of country I was in, a country of which he seemed to be what we call in the schools a microcosm. For I could not help feeling, in the course of my journeyings, that our England is especially favoured of St. Francis and France of St. Dominic. The French love much talking and constant strife against an adversary, as do the Dominicans.20 The French are not content to watch patiently or learn quietly, but must ever be dictating to all about them, as with the Black Friars. The French are very quick to seize upon a logical fallacy and will endlessly distinguish terms and definitions—they would subtly divide the atom if they could, a thing said to be indivisible, and here the Dominicans are their spokesmen. We Franciscans at Oxford love knowledge as scientia, the Dominicans as weapons for dialectic. Thus, the Dominicans are not greatly original. They despise the mathematics, and contemn the study of the works of God in nature. They are impatient of experiment and interest themselves more in what ought to be than in what is. They are content not only to take the dogmas of the apostolic Church as they are now understood, but make no attempt to understand them more deeply. Now God forgive me if I seem arrogant or presumptuous, but in England knowledge is sought in peace and solitude of the soul, which alone gives happiness. I cannot but revere the wisdom of the great St. Francis, who enjoined us not to engage in the idle bickerings of the scholastics. Of all things in England, I missed most our English ale. The French drink a great deal of thin and sour wine, which no doubt accounts for the feverish heat of their blood and their inward bitterness of soul.
I own my Dominican brother was not greatly versed in our learning. Of such Franciscans at Oxford as Duns and William of Occam,21 whose fame I thought had surely overspread the world, he knew nothing, and he repeated to me an old wives’ tale, which I have heard among the idle in England, that the learned and unhappy friar, Roger Bacon, was a sorcerer who made brazen heads through which the devil spoke, shattered by the Dominican Albert, whom he called Magnus.22 I held my peace, for I had always held the learning and intellect of Friar Bacon in great reverence, though I own he did not well in speaking so maliciously of your preceptor, Alexander of Hales.23 He also discoursed at length on what he was pleased to call the newfangled philosophy of Thomas of Aquin.24 Some of the Black Friars, he said, were much taken up with his doctrines, and there was some talk of adopting them, but he was of the opinion that they contained damnable heresies, and he was sure the Dominicans would reject them. I marvelled greatly at such talk from a Dominican and finally asked him wherein lay his opposition, but to this he made vague answers, that it were better to stick to the old Fathers, that we would gain nothing by trafficking with Aristotle, who was the source of Saracen philosophy, not of ours, and much more to the same effect.
Amiens and Beauvais, the first eighty, the second fifty, miles from Paris, were two of the towns at which we halted that I particularly noticed. The fame of the wonderful cathedral at Amiens has no doubt reached your ears but that of Beauvais was vain and pretentious, built, like the Tower of Babel, out of the levity and wickedness of pride, no doubt too in emulous rivalry of Amiens. Why grown men of one town should desire to have a cathedral merely bigger than that of the next town, I cannot tell. To punish those of Beauvais for their folly, God caused the choir roof to collapse some years ago, but even this chastening seems not to have humbled them.25 Otherwise, the towns of Normandy seem to me to be full of dirt and impudence.
Paris in particular seems to hold within its walls—without them, too, as, having nearly thirty thousand people and nearly as large as London, it has outgrown them—all I have noted as belonging to the life of France. It is noisy, like the French everywhere—the shopkeepers and hawkers keep up an infernal din, shouting their cries, which, however, are sometimes musical and pleasing in themselves. The people are at once dishonest and polite—without my frugal and wary Dominican friend I should have been grossly swindled out of what money I had and without doubt should have been poisoned by their food.
We went from St. Denis through the Rue St. Martin, through the Ville and across the Pont Notre Dame, which bridges the Seine, to the université, where I parted from my friend, leaving him rather abruptly in the middle of a discourse on the universals, he holding strongly with the Platonic realists. This problem no longer greatly interests me, so I had few qualms in departing to join the Franciscans. The University of Paris is the greatest in Europe, much larger than Oxford, and it has a great influence, so they boast, over the decisions of the Pope of Rome. Moreover, they say, this is only the beginning of its career, and they believe that in future Paris will be the seat of all learning, the caput mundi26 of thought. The students are more quarrelsome even than they are at Oxford, and, being in a larger town, spend a great deal more money. Incessant argument over the Sentences of the worthy Peter Lombard reveal to me such a gross perversion and misunderstanding of the whole problem that I propose myself to study here when I become licensed at Oxford, and clear up the great doubts that pervade the minds of men concerning this book.27 I was somewhat homesick in Paris, as, though no heretic, I deplore the tendency of the Dominicans to tyrannize over the students and to stick too closely to the record of the past. I also grieve that the Dominicans, by their excessive zeal for orthodoxy, are far better organized than the Franciscans, despite the fomenting of strife by the opponents of him of Aquin. The Franciscans here know not whether to follow the philosophical paths of Alexander of Hales or those of Bonaventura, the great general who was so bitter against our Friar Bacon,28 and they do not understand that both are equally pleasing to God, if so be they would only pursue their studies quietly, as we do at Oxford, and not try to condemn all as heretical who do not think as they do. I distrust, however, a growth of Zealots in the order, as they call themselves, men who pretend to approach more nearly to the doctrine of St. Francis, in giving up all wealth, all knowledge, all understanding, retiring to huts and to the forests. This is a gross perversion—a life such as they propose is surely no better than that of a beast. They would rather preach to birds than to men, as though they had misread the Scriptures, and thought God to care more for sparrows than for those whom he made in his own likeness. It is not likely, however, that this heresy will spread.29
The King of France is absent in Flanders, and I could not see him.30 I understand, however, that he is tall and fair, grave, courteous and at times kindly,31 but proud and in general more anxious for his own glory than for the welfare of his subjects. The country is impoverished by war. In England the classes of society seem to get along fairly well together, though there is much social unrest between classes. In France, on the contrary, the different ranks are rigidly set, and their duties to one another, or, at least, to the higher, clearly defined, while among those of one class are constant wrangling and strife. In both London and Paris I much misdoubt the effect of the growing of towns upon the world. The bourgeois, as they call them here32 or burghers, are sturdy, and sometimes sturdy knaves. They are unwilling to own anyone but themselves for their masters; they serve not in wars as the vassals do; they amass much money in trade and are beginning to have a good deal of control, in consequence, over the nobility and even the king himself, who is always in debt for his wars and pleasurings. In England, when nobles wanted money, they went to Jewish moneylenders, but as no Jew can safely retain his ill-gotten fortunes in a Christian land, there was little danger of this sort. There are still Jews in France,33 but our present king has banished them from England,34 in misguided zeal for our faith, as I think. I should not care to have such worldly fellows as these townsmen become too powerful, but it may be difficult later to hold them in check.
I knew you were interested in the Knights Templar,35 and I made a few inquiries. All I know about them is that, now that the crusades seem definitely to be given up, the king is at a loss to know what to do with them, as they are not nurses, like the Hospitallers,36 and seem to be an encumbrance upon the land. Many of them are old, worn out with service, but the order has gathered great wealth and much land into its possession. There is some talk of uniting them to the Hospitallers, but their vows are not the St. John vows, and there seems nothing that can now be done with them except forcibly to suppress them. The king is known to be not only rapacious and greedy for gain, but withal in sore straits for money to carry on his wars, and I much fear that a sad end will befall the Knights of the Temple.37 Some of their members are accused of heresy. I met their Grand Master, Jacques De Molay, whom I should not welcome as a brother in my own order, he being dour and sullen, with a most craven terror of innovation of all kinds.38
Nor is wanting a bitter dislike of all things English in the hearts of some of the less charitable brethren. In Paris I was talking to an abbot, a graduate of the university and in his way a learned man, who, as soon as he caught my name and nationality, turned to others that were present and commenced a long and slanderous discourse to the effect that Britain was the source of all atheism, which he was pleased to ascribe to the foggy mists which he asserted always hung over the island. “These noxious vapours,” said he, “rise from below; they are the breath or effluvium of hell, and breed the most pestilential heresies: from Pelagius of accursed memory39 to Friar Bacon the British have vomited forth a continuous stream of apostasy.” At this I could no longer contain and broke forth into vehement protest. But he was not to be silenced and said furthermore: “The English have always tried to examine nature, as if, forsooth, there were secrets there not immediately revealed by God. In this last hundred years, not only your Bacon friar went into sorcery, but a fellow named Bartholomew tried to make a compendium of all knowledge,40 as though he would be another Aristotle: always there is prying into forbidden mysteries. And not only this, but, in order to bolster up your vanity, you take it into the realm of philosophy itself, and talk, and have talked, since your patron saint Pelagius, about the primacy of the will as against the orthodox ideas of divine grace.41 The whole tendency of English thought is toward the destruction of all philosophy tending to reconcile reason and faith and toward elaboration of natural science by observations and experiments made in the pride of the soul.” He would have gone on, but was interrupted by a man also present of some consequence in France, named Pierre Dubois, who spoke bitterly of Pope Boniface’s opposition to the French king.42 He announced that the French king was truly, and not the German emperor, the temporal lord of the world, that the English were French vassals. He wanted the Templars destroyed and rooted out. “The heresies you mention,” said he to the abbot, “will last as long as England does; they will ever plague and confuse the world till they are conquered by France.”
I was glad to leave the company, for I do not understand and do not like what I do understand of a new spirit, rife even in England and rampant in France, of setting up the king to be supreme lord and ruler over all. Men like DuBois seem to want to break down all the social barriers between the king and his people, destroy the aristocracy, leave nothing but king and subjects. They do not say this, but I believe they would rejoice to see it done. And, therefore, they pay homage, in their pride, to their own nation, to contemn the Vicar of Christ and despise the unity of Christendom. Truly the world will be in great distress when the Christian nations undertake crusades, not against the infidel, but against each other. I do not like this nationalism, yet it seems to be growing steadily.
After I left Paris, I set out for Troyes, congratulating myself on having learned something of the Aquinian philosophy without becoming involved in dispute of my own accord; though in Rome I was compelled to defend the doctrines of my brother Duns at some length, as you shall presently hear, I was not anxious, feeling unprepared and very ignorant, to match my wits against those trained in the greatest university in the world. Barely had I left Paris behind, when a thin and shabby-looking man approached, who, seeing my cloth, flung a taunt in my face. I responded meekly enough, when, immediately relenting, he came up to me: “I see you are not one of those greedy ones,” he said, “who wax fat on the sweat of the poor.” I held some discourse with him and found him witty and entertaining, albeit too profane in his utterance. His name, he said, was Jean Clopinel (he walked with a slight limp), and he came from the town of Meun on the Loire, near Orleans.43 He was a poet, and read me some verses of his, which sounded agreeably in my ears, though I winced at their freedom and the viciousness of his spite, of which the poor Franciscans received an ample share. In fine, we parted on good terms. He asked me when my own country would start writing poetry, and I hesitated, somewhat abashed, finally saying that the English language was a polyglot mixture of English and French, not as ripened or as disciplined in its numbers as the French. “Nonsense,” said he, “your language is as good as any.” And in truth I have often felt, preaching in England in the vulgar tongue, that there was a strong and supple strength in it that needed only the touch of a poet to make us see it. And I know other Franciscans, too, who have felt a thrill of pleasure from the same source.
In Troyes I encountered one Villani, a young Florentine, journeying to Paris.44 He had just been in Rome and was on his way to Paris through the great trade road that leads from Italy into France through Champagne. He told me much of what I was to see at Rome and Florence, but especially the latter. He was glowing with enthusiasm and said that the jubilee celebration there had fired him with zeal to commemorate the glories of his own birthplace as those of Rome had been so frequently celebrated.45 I liked him much better than DuBois; though he has only one idea, the splendour and greatness of Florence, yet he is a Guelph, for so they term adherents of the pope in Italy, and he has a rich store of information. Everything bears on his city, however; the Creation of the world was only the necessary prelude to its founding. Troyes has also a fine cathedral of St. Peter,46 but a townsman with whom I talked told me he feared the king of France, for Troyes is the centre of Champagne and holds many prosperous fairs attended by the Flemings, but should Champagne ever be united to France, as Philip was moving heaven and earth to do, the Flemings would stop coming, and the town would be ruined.
I pushed on to Dijon in another three days, a splendid town where lives the Duke of Burgundy with a brilliant court.47 A cathedral is going up, of course, beside the one of St. Bénigne, in which was a boys’ school I visited.48 This I liked not: their masters keep close watch over them, armed with rods which they hardly ever put down. Each master sleeps between two boys at night, and never lets them go where he cannot be spying upon them. Telling tales is encouraged, and all the masters are feverishly anxious to beat their charges on the least provocation. They call their cruelty and love of torture by such names as discipline and protection, which is all the more loathsome. One lad was being beaten when I was there, and, on my inquiring the cause, I was informed that, having been instructed in the doctrines of the Church regarding the future life, he had innocently asked whether he were now in purgatory or in hell. I wondered what our gentle St. Anselm would say to such a place,49 a school no better than a prison or a madhouse.
Here I met a Black Friar whom I greatly admired and respected, as much as anyone of that cloth I have encountered, despite his numerous faults. He was a German, Johannes Eckhart by name, and was on his way to Paris: indeed I had heard something of him there. He is truly a deep and noble spirit, a sort of thinker we call mystical, like Porphyry and his school. We talked as we walked through the streets of Dijon, and quietly, but, so as to command respect, in Latin with a rather heavy German accent, he led me into paths of philosophy I had never traversed. He was anxious to bring to his native Germany, as he said, some of the measure of learning with which Paris had astonished the world. He had no wearisome system of doctrines to expound all in a breath, but he spoke from such profound wisdom and insight that I marvelled, although some of his opinions sounded rather harshly in my ears. I had been startled to hear God called nothing, when he explained that a God of simplicity could not be predicated with complexities. He, too, is something of a Thomist, as they call the adherents of that renowned Black Friar, though from what I know of him I doubt his approval of such doctrines as that God is all existence, which smacks of a dangerous kind of pantheism, a fault I have noted as pervading very much of this kind of ecstasy-thinking. Nor was I better pleased at a mysterious Sabellian-sounding doctrine, that God’s Creation and Incarnation must be the same, as in the former God entered the world of life, as his coeternal Son. I fear for the Germans, a lumpish race at best and totally unskilled in the subtleties of Paris or Oxford, that heretical mischances may beset them. But Meister Eckhart, for such they call him, is himself so much wiser than his doctrines, that the truth shines out through them, like a torch in a dark street.50
Being in a hurry to get to Rome, I chose to go through Geneva into the Piedmont country in Italy, passing through Florence, Siena, and Assisi to Rome. Not to visit Assisi for a Grey Friar would be a sin of omission;51 to avoid Florence would be impossible after meeting Villani, and I was curious to learn the reason for his so earnestly conjuring me to avoid Siena as I would the devil. So I journeyed toward Geneva, which I found, as I have found many cities, in a state of unhappiness and turmoil. The city desires to be independent, like the Italian city states, and has revolted against its overlord, calling in a prince named Charles of Savoy, to aid them, and as the foreign prince assuredly does it not solely of his goodwill, I fear more bloodshed.52 In addition, the tyrant house of Habsburg, which rules Austria and all the Alp country, presses the peasant in the neighbourhood of Geneva and far to the east, so that much sullen opposition arises.53 I understand an alliance already has been formed. Formerly the peasants could appeal to the emperor, but now, with the Empire so weak, they may resist of themselves. They seem intent on forming yet another nation to disturb the rest of the people of God. At present all is quiet, a rebellion having been recently quelled, but the peace is outward only. The burghers, as is their custom, care more for themselves than for the fate of the peasants.
Outside an inn in the town, I heard a stream of the most scurrilous abuse, blasphemy, and obscenity coming from a voice I placed as that of a young boy, kicking and screaming in the grip of the innkeeper. I made inquiries, and found that the lad had been accused of stealing money from one of the guests. To prove his innocence, he was ordered to touch a red-hot poker extended to him, but by an agile twist, he wrenched himself free, the poker touching the innkeeper’s thigh, to the latter’s great discomfort. It transpired that the boy was a strolling German vagabond, full of tricks and merriment, but a thorough rogue. His name, they said, was Eulenspiegel, which in that tongue signifies Owl-Glass.54
I passed quickly out of Geneva and crossed the Alps over an old military road, built, it was said, by the Romans, like the road between Oxford and London. After about ten days I found myself in the plain of northern Italy and rested for a while at a town called Piacenza, which controls the trade route on the southern bank of the Po. You have no doubt heard that all the cities of Italy are torn by the factious strife between a party claiming to support the pope, called the Guelphs, and another the emperor, called the Ghibellines, the first wearing red roses, the second white ones. I cannot see why pope or emperor should be proud of either; they fight solely, it would seem, out of their own wicked perversity. For these Latins love nothing better than strife: the great nobles live only to hate one another and the people follow them gladly. The town of Piacenza is at the climax of a war with the ruler of Milan, Matteo Visconti; first submitting to him, one named Scotto is now in revolt.55
The Italians are very considerate with the pilgrims, and I reached Florence without difficulty, only to find that unhappy and beautiful city in an uproar. Not content with the Guelph and Ghibelline warfare, two separate parties have formed themselves, called the Blacks and the Whites. Even while I was at Piacenza, the quarrel broke out in Pistoia, a town near here. Florence is a Guelphic city, and this brawling means that the Guelphs are fighting among themselves.56 I spoke to a fellow-pilgrim from the south of France, lamenting much the folly and wickedness that compels men to take sides for the mere pleasure of slaughtering their fellow-creatures. “Oh,” said he, “I have talked to some of the men here, and there is something behind it. You know, of course, that partisans of pope and emperor are the cause of the fighting between Guelph and Ghibelline. Now the emperor no longer rules the world, and the great pride and haughtiness of the present pope assuredly goes before his fall, if there is any truth in Scripture.57 By his incessant war-rings both in Sicily and in Tuscany, the pope has degraded himself to the rank of a mere prince. Hence, the nations afar off will shake his yoke from their shoulders, and wars will no longer be conducted for the sake of the dead cause of whether pope or emperor shall rule the world. Strong nations like Britain and France will arise and fight with each other; the emperor will have to fight his subjects at home. Italy can never be a nation: each city desires to rule itself. The city welcomes only those rulers who rule many other cities and are of no great strength anywhere, so that they may be the more easily overthrown. Hence, before Italy lies nothing but perpetual internecine strife and revolt.”
I said that this was exceedingly clear, but I inquired how far the quarrel of White and Black had anything to do with this, as it seemed to have no purpose behind it. “That,” said he, “is the sign of a new kind of war, a kind that will become more frequent later on. It is only the rich who fight, and they need money for wars. They take this money from the poor, and the poor will revolt. Hence, men will fight for gain.” (I thought here of my merchant adventurer.) “But within the state itself will be a war of classes, of rich and of poor. The Blacks wear that colour to signify that they are tyrants: they desire to hold all things in subjection to their own pride. They are the great, rich, noble families, whose minds are ever dwelling on the past—their past—who have no faith in anything but force, and no confidence in any state not an oligarchy. The Whites are more liberal: they stand for reform and greater administration of justice, for patronage of the new art, of gradual growth of a freer spirit.” I marvelled somewhat at this, suspecting him to have talked with one of White sympathies and, therefore, to read into the struggle, as heretics do with the Scriptures and Fathers, more than was there, as both sides seemed to me exceedingly cruel and greedy. I asked him if there were any hope for eventual peace and received the amazing answer that good and evil were equally strong in the world, that they would always contend with one another, being opposites in the body as well as in the state, for the spirit was good, but the flesh evil. At this I looked narrowly at him, and thought I could detect a deep circular scar winding up his arm; wherefore I concluded that he was of the so-called Cathari, one who had been questioned by our Dominican brethren and was going to Rome to seek absolution.58 I can hardly yet understand how he escaped a worse fate than the rack, though, as this heresy is practically extinguished, vigilance may have been relaxed. I was told that King Philip of France was preparing for a campaign in the south which would unite Provence to that kingdom. I think he was afraid to acquaint me further with his heresies, fearing no doubt that he had already said too much.
I met another Provençal in Florence as well; indeed most of the pilgrims I have met came from there. He assured me he was not a heretic, but spoiled his protestations by telling me what the other man had, that the pope was too proud to hold dominion over the world long. “Other men are strong enough to destroy him,” said he: “the King of France, perhaps, not the emperor, who has no Empire, but only a ghost of one. It is the nation which will arise, and among the greatest of those nations will be the Provençal, which has had a civilization and literature of its own already for centuries.” In some ways this talk reminded me of that of a nominalist at Oxford, a friend of Master William of Occam, who asserted that “Christendom” was an abstraction, a universalia post rem, formed of nations, which had a universalia in re.59 This newfangled nationalism, as I may call it, seems bound up with nominalism. This Provençal went so far as to say, being somewhat in his cups when I talked with him, that the Holy Apostolic Church was not universal, that each nation reshaped or translated religion in its own way. The so-called heresy of the Albigensians, he said, was only the Provençal way of worshipping God, quite right for the Provencals, wrong for anyone else.60 Desire for dominion and power had led popes and kings against them. “Destroy the Cathari,” he said, “and you destroy the troubadours,” for such they call their poets and wandering minstrels, accounted the best in the world. I set down all these absurdities, dear brother, in the hope that you may be the less alarmed at the views expressed in Oxford by young students full of new wine.
Upon the many beauties of Florence I cannot dwell, nor on those of Siena, which is a Ghibelline city and a rival of Florence. I was eager for the end of my journey, and the strife and bloodshed of Italy blurred my happiness. The Florentines and Sienese each have schools of painting, full of a strange new beauty I cannot describe, as we have nothing like it in England, much as I should like to see it there. I do not claim to understand all the subtleties, as I am not acquainted with the art, but in the gorgeous colouring, the reds and greens and blues, the brilliant gold backgrounds, the loving care of decoration, in the haloes and framing of scenes, the majestic and yet easy balancing of figures, there is a piety and adoration all our learned doctors and theologians cannot express. The Florentines seem to me the stronger, more learned, more rich and various, the Sienese more light-hearted and winsome. Verily I believe, dear brother, that could our guide St. Francis have seen the works of the Sienese Duccio,61 he would have counselled his order that here lay the true approach to God, not in striving to emulate the endless disputings and contendings of the Dominicans in logic and rhetoric. Perhaps, after all, that was what St. Francis meant.
Possibly I say too much, but at Assisi was all the labour and genius expended best fitting for our saintly founder. Assisi itself is a small and sullen town groaning under a tyrant, like all Italian cities, but in the cathedral of St. Francis I took my refuge. There were two men whose work I most admired. Cimabue, now an old man of sixty, has many pictures of a dignity and massiveness which do not lack grace, but, so I was told, reflect the Byzantine Greeks in severity and grandeur.62 Somehow I missed the sweetness and gentleness of St. Francis. I caught it better by seeing the work of the famous di Bondone, who is here familiarly called Giotto, whom I caught a glimpse of in Florence, thin and refined of countenance, though with an expression so unaccountably droll and odd that it is apparent that he looks with much indulgence upon the capers of his brother ass.631 saw an artist working on a panel and was amazed at the skill and courage it takes to paint. He laid a coat of white lime on the wall and applied on it his paints with the greatest of skill and rapidity. Once his hand faulted, and to my astonishment, he did not correct his blunder, but erased everything he had done and started again with his lime coat. It would seem as though painting in this way would be apt to lead one into venial sins, as the cursing he did under his breath would have been sharply rebuked by a Dominican, but he talked with me later and said that, while alterations could be made with a smeary concoction of glue and eggs64 which he showed me, no painter who valued his reputation ever used it.65
I paid my appropriate devotions at the shrine of our founder, and then set out for Rome, which I could hardly see, so crowded it was with pilgrims. A bridge leading to the great churches of St. Peter and St. Paul seems almost in danger of collapse, so vast is the number thronging it. At the shrines of the great churches money is tossed down in such quantities, gold, silver, baser metals, and the new Venetian paper, that the priests gather it in with rakes. The reproach is often levelled at the pope for holding this jubilee that he does it only to gain money for his wars, which are carried on to the north in Tuscany, where he sides with the Blacks, and to the south in Sicily, where he has temporal and dynastic ambitions unbefitting the Vicar of Christ. He extends indulgences to pilgrims who come to Rome, practically selling them in fact, which I do not like, nor do I care overmuch for the gambling tables which add so plentifully to his stores. I have heard strange rumours of his pride and contempt of his inferiors. Once he kicked a kneeling archbishop in the face; he has insulted all his cardinals, glorifies his family, and takes terrible revenges on his enemies. Though, like the English and French kings, he is handsome and of imposing presence, he inspires one with a feeling of fear for the apostolic Church. Men say on all sides that the world is too small to contain the pride of both the king of France and the pope of Rome, and that, when we see who is stronger, we shall no longer pay tribute to the latter. The pope, however, is mighty yet, and has powerful friends, though his enemies increase daily.
One pilgrim to whom I talked was a Franciscan brother from Illyria, who had a friend that had set out for the East. I supposed he meant Jerusalem, but he said that the brother went much further than that, further than the country of the Saracens or of Prester John,66 out to a mighty and populous empire that lay to the west of a great ocean. The king of that country has a yellow face, slanting eyes, straight hair, and long nails, which, except for the last, I have seen in a strange-looking barbarian in Geneva, who was called a Magyar, and came from Hungary, the king of which land67 is now in Rome. This Eastern monarch desires to learn something of our faith, the friar told me, and Franciscans and Dominicans had both been sent out.68 “What think you,” said the brother, “touching the opinion of Pythagoras, that the earth on which we live is spherical, and that the ocean which lies on the east of this kingdom beats on the west of France?” I had nothing to say to this, but was thrilled to the marrow at the thought of our faith thus encircling the world. He also told me that these people killed each other with something like Greek fire, which burst and destroyed everything around it. Armor, he said, was not proof against it, and it would soon become known in Europe.69
There was, too, a man from Catalonia, on the east of Spain, who was a pupil, as he said, of one Ramon Lull, a scholar deeply versed in the philosophy of the Arabs, one who had fearlessly faced martyrdom, preaching the gospel to the infidel in North Africa. He told me that his master had many schemes for the reform of education, in fact had written of a state administered according to good and sound laws, like the state of Plato, and though no one would listen to him in Rome or Paris, he was now on his way to Cyprus.70 This pupil seemed learned, but I did not understand his bewildering Arab philosophic theories. The Moors, it would seem, labour more mightily even than the Dominicans over matters of logic. I understood much better why Master Lull had not been more attentively received in Europe. He has fallen in love with the Arab mathematic and would forsooth reduce the concepts of philosophy to symbols, as they use letters in their algebra. Hence, he may solve all problems possible to think of by the theory of numbers. This is called the “Great Art,” and it would be a great art indeed, were concepts so simple affairs.71
Ever since I had left Paris, however, I had reflected much on what little I had heard of the Aquinian philosophy, and was eager to find someone of the darker cloth, to see if I had understood it correctly and if it would stand against attack. I had not long to seek, as a Dominican Florentine soon fell in with me and opened the question on which I had thought most keenly, that of whether the will or intellect were the stronger.
“You Dominicans,” I said to try him out, “hold, as I conceive it, to a determinism on this matter which destroys the concept of free will.”
“Absolutely wrong,” said the Dominican. “The will is bound by lack of knowledge, and where it works as master, it is blind. Only the reason can free it from its bondage. Wherefore we hold that it is a matter of the plainest sense that the will not only cannot stir without knowledge, but that it is knowledge alone which shows it how to act. Knowledge alone can give ideas, including the idea of goodness. Therefore, when the will strives toward the goal of the good, that goal is marked by knowledge, and knowledge is the necessary determining cause of the activity of the will.”
“I am not so sure,” said I, “that the will in the mass of men makes such mighty strives toward the good; how could men not brutish do evil, if knowledge of the good necessitated good actions? But tell me. Where do we get our ideas? Are they not from nature?”
“Assuredly.”
“But is nature determined or free?”
“She is determined.”
“Nature obeys law, truly. But if ideas are from nature, they must be of nature; therefore, the will entangles itself, in its helplessness, with a mesh of determined natural causes. I protest I see nothing but determinism in this: if the will obeys intellect, intellect obeys nature.”
“But where does will find its objects, if not from knowledge?” inquired the Dominican, somewhat abashed.
“From ideas, as you say; the servants of the will, the occasioning causes of its self-determined motion.”
“But surely the will, even with this, chooses better ideas rather than worse ones?”
“It chooses, on the contrary, those sharper, clearer, more distinct, which stand out from a multitude of confusions. But never does an idea become clear unless we fasten our attention upon it, by which is signified the will.”
“That may be true for empiric actions. But the intellect is still higher than the will, for its end, the truth, is higher than the end of the bonum, the good. What is true is always true; what is good is good only for a certain time and place. Truth is eternal; good is impregnated with the corruption of life and death.”
“But do you assume so rigid a divorce between the good and the true?”
“What I mean,” he said, “is, that good as such, sub specie aeternitatis,72 is alone apprehended by intellect: the special transient forms it takes are achieved by will. Truth is eternal goodness.”
“But if the will strives to achieve the good, and if it alone can so strive, it alone has the goal of the good in sight. Once reached, it may be asked, whether it be true or not that this is good. The good is, thus, an eternal principle, manifested empirically by the criterion of truth, which reverses your statement.”
“How,” demanded the Dominican, “could you attribute primacy of will to God? No one, I suppose, doubts the reality of the divine will, but we must assume that God creates only what he knows is good; that he works through self-determining necessity. The divine will is, thus, limited by the divine wisdom. Otherwise, if God were essentially a will, he would be an imperfect, desiring God, ever striving to achieve a goal, even as the human will.”
“But the goal of good the divine wisdom postulates must either have been formulated by the divine will, or it must have arisen independently, in obedience to the mandates of a being greater than God, which is absurd. God is not infinite if he is not absolute arbitrary will: had he chosen to incarnate himself in a donkey instead of in a man, he could have done so.73 One must not limit God to a necessary choice.”
“Then is goodness not the essential nature of God; for if the moral law which is God’s command issues from arbitrary will, there is nothing inherently good in it: for the will might have willed the opposite way.”
“This I believe,” I said. “For, though it may seem a hard statement that nothing is per se good except God, the complement is manifest, that nothing is per se evil except insofar as it violates the will or command of God, as we maintain against the Manichees.”
“But if God is essentially will,” said the Dominican, “then is our preaching and study vain, for we comprehend through reason, and if reason elaborates a philosophy, and theology is concerned with God, there can be no connection between philosophy and theology.”
“There is none,” I said. “I place the emphasis on their separation. Faith is faith, and reason is reason: we know what to believe, and our speculation may lead us into as many absurdities as it will without danger.”
“If will is essentially strife and desire, how can we hope for immortal blessedness, which is surely nothing but the constant contemplation of the excellence of God?”
“Happiness can never be attained by reason; it is the result of directing the will towards God. Hence, the final state of blessedness is not mere passive contemplation, but active love, and action is willing.”
But all my arguments on the Continent led eventually to reflections on my nationality, in conformity with the new fashion of thinking, and my Dominican was no exception. “Did Pelagius then found Oxford?” he asked. “For here is again the view that the wonderful human will does as it pleases with the poor divine grace.”
By this time we had reached the Angel Bridge,74 when I noticed a tall and thin man intently regarding the crowd, with an expression on his face of such bitter sorrow and yet such piercing wisdom that I was filled with horror and awe at once and whispered to my companion, asking him what manner of man he could be. “His name is Alighieri,” said he, “a Florentine: they say he has been in hell.”75
Verily I believe it to be a short and easy road thither from Italy, dear brother, and I cannot get that face out of my mind. Incessant warfare, unheard of cruelties, are the accompaniment of such splendour and magnificence as I should never have believed possible. Our great St. Francis would not despise the body, and in this he differed from many, who have despised it so long that in fury and resentment it seems even now to be rising up to destroy the spirit. The pride of the nobles has robbed the peasants so that the feudal tenure is falling to pieces. The towns are growing and puffing themselves up with pride and vainglory. There is, consequently, more money, and the world is greedier for gain. The Church still stands, but corrupted at its source. Something is creeping over Italy, a pride and resurrection of the body, which is on one side glorious, strong, and with a terrible beauty, and on the other unimaginably cruel, lecherous, and evil. I am impatient to return, dear brother, to what seems to me now a tranquil and peaceful country, the England especially favoured of St. Francis.
History of the Middle Ages, 300–1400, Thompson. [James W. Thompson, History of the Middle Ages, 300–1500. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1931]
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Coulton: A Medieval Garner. [G.G. Coulton, A Medieval Garner: Human Documents from the Four Centuries Preceding the Reformation. London: Constable, 1910]
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Boase: Boniface VIII, 1294–1303. [T.S.R. Boase, Boniface VIII, 1294–1303. London: Constable, 1933]
Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 7. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911]
Joan Evans: Medieval France. [Joan Evans, Life in Medieval France. London: Phaidon, 1925]
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Chaucer: Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
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Histories of philosophy by Windelband [Wilhelm Windelband, A History of Philosophy. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1921], Ueberweg [Friedrich Ueberweg, A History of Philosophy from Thales to the Present. 2nd ed. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1875], and Erdmann [Johann Erdmann, A History of Philosophy. 2nd ed. 3 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1892].
General Reference Works: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Catholic Encyclopedia, Dictionary of National Biography.